Past, Present, and Future
by qjhayes11
Summary: Jane Rizzoli has taken a bullet that almost ended her life. As she's recovering she takes stock in her life. Her past experiences. Her present case that has wrought tragedy on everyone involved. and her future in Law Enforcement that may one day take her away from her wife and daughter. Pre-established Rizzles. Kept T for easy location. Read A/N for more.


**A/N: So I initially wrote one chapter that I couldn't get out of my head and put it out here as a potential five chapter story and it kind of grew. A five shot story grew into a three book saga that has plagued me for a while and I've got it all worked out. Don't worry, I drive for a living and often have nothing to do but write so I WILL be writing until completion. Not to mention that it's a Rizzles / Caskett story.****I love the R&I series as well as Castle, Crossing Jordan and Bones. **

**I can****not emphasize enough that although my other stories are in the Mature category; its because of language, and the violence that is inevitable in cop stories. The few scenes of Loving are done cleanly and with taste not like many stories you'll find there. I**** put this together to hopefully draw you in to checking out my other work. I hope you like my stories and I love to read comments and Ideas as I am always looking to improve my writing style. One of my commenters wrote a simple line implying some danger to draw two characters together. That one comment spurred off five chapters that I think were the best in the story. **

**Somebody hit PLAY, will ya?**

**_Note: All characters with the exception of my originals and their shows are the properties of their respective owners and distributors and I mean no disrespect or harm to them, their properties or the fine talent that brings them to our homes. _**

**_I just like to play in your sandbox for a while and I hope that's cool with you._**

**_R&I&C&L&O_**

**_Please note that this is an Excerpt from a story that I am currently working out. It will be Book 3 in a series called The Raven. Click on my name to be brought to all of my stories. Book 1 is complete except for editing and is posted, Book 2 is called Burn and it will be posting soon. Book 3 is called Daughters of Darkness (working title) and key parts have already been written and I'm just ironing out plot and filling in._**

* * *

><p>Past, Present and Future.<p>

"_Paging Dr. Underwood. Dr. Justin Underwood to Pediatrics. Dr. Justin Underwood to Pediatrics."_

_God how I hate being in here. _She sat up in the bed as the page continued over the hospital PA system. She had already seen to many hospital rooms in her career, most were not for her but every now and again she ended up being a patient, like she had been for the last four weeks.

It's not like she ever went out looking to get shot. It was just part of her job as a Homicide Detective. Every cop knew the dangers involved when they went out to enforce the law. Every cop knew that the morning where they kissed their significant other could be the last time they ever get the chance. It was something no cop dwelled on.

Most just pushed the thought aside, others used it as a reason to show the ones they love how much they care so that if their number was up. They had no regrets. Jane Rizzoli had been one of the former. Pushing the danger out of her mind so it couldn't distract her, but this time it was different for her. No matter how much she tried, she couldn't get the thought out of her head.

It was the first time she had ever been in here since she became a mother and the bullet that had pierced her chest had tried to take her away from her family. It had passed within micrometers of her heart, literally passing between heartbeats. Now she bore a new scar, one that matched her best friend's. Kate Beckett had firsthand knowledge of what it felt like to come that close to the Grim Reaper. But Kate had been hit with a fifty caliber sniper round and Jane had been shot at close range with a .38, less than fifty six feet away.

She gently touched the stich work between her breasts beneath the ugly blue hospital gown and thought of how close she had come to losing everything. As she looked down at her left hand, the gold glint of her ring caught her attention.

She held up her left hand and stared at it. Thin and made of 24 carat gold that sparkled even under the sadly lacking dull glow of the hospital lights, it was neatly wrapped around her ring finger.

Her wife had scrubbed furiously at it to get the blood off while she was in surgery and now it shined like the day Maura had put it on her hand. Etched deeply into the gold were the words _ma vie, mon âme soeur__**,.**_ Her wife had learned French from an early age and Jane loved whenever she heard her speak it.

On their wedding day, she too had slipped an identical ring on to Maura's hand except for the words were etched in Italian, _la mia vita, la mia anima gemella,._ Both rings said the same thing, "My life, my soulmate," punctuated by commas in a never ending circle of their declaration of love.

She smiled at the memories she had of her beautiful wife. Even though they had only been married a few short years, both knew that it was something that had been every bit as true today as it had been that first time they had lunch together.

It had been a long, bumpy road.

Jane let her hand drop into her lap as she eyed the red leather bound book she knew all too well sitting on the bedside table with one of Rick Castle's look-like-an-antique pens sitting right next to it. She had hated him for writing it because that book contained all of her pain and anguish inside. Everything she had gone through after she had thought she lost Maura. Eight months of suffering were in there and six months of Jane's trying desperately to move on knowing she never could. She thought Rick had betrayed her trust to write down her most intimate secrets about her life and her pain, more so when he gave it to Maura before they were together again. She had wanted to burn it every time someone had read it and despite the desire to hurt the writer, she hadn't. She didn't know why but she had kept the book and the one that followed it.

Now she knew why.

_I kept it for Mia Bell. _She thought thinking of her infant daughter, Caterina.

Jane picked it up and looked at the clock. Her best friend and partner wouldn't be back for about an hour and Maura was coming over right after work to check on her. She again marveled at how things worked out. Once Maura Isles, before she became Maura Isles-Rizzoli, was her best friend and in many ways she still was but she was also more. Maura was her soulmate, the one person Jane couldn't live without. Kate Beckett was just a friend she got to see a couple times a year and then somehow things got turned upside down and Kate had become the best friend Jane had ever had.

All three had taken a while to get used to the change but Kate and Maura hit it off well enough that it had never become an issue.

Jane flipped through the book, written in Richard Castle's own hand and it was only one of two books that he had written that wasn't fiction. It was fact, it was Jane's life. That was why he titled it _The Diary of Jane_.

This was the only copy as was the second book which was still sitting on the shelf in her home office. His neat masculine script was etched onto each page with his own hand. On one hand Jane should feel flattered that a bestselling author had wrote a book about her but it was all so personal and she had wanted to beat him to death with it when she found out it existed. When Maura had pulled it out and slid it over to her in that Italian restaurant.

She sighed heavily causing an ache in her chest from both the bullets passage and subsequent repairs and for the weight of her heart at what she was about to do.

She closed the book and reopened it to the first page. Stretching to grab the pen she groaned as the pain came in waves and she hoped that this would help quell her thoughts. She took a deep breath and put the pen to the blank page.

_My dearest Caterina,_

_I really don't know how to do this so I'll take example from your uncle Rick and just dive right in. I had a close call at work and I've been doing a lot of thinking while I'm at the hospital and I can't get it out of my head. As a cop, like your aunt Katie and your uncle Frankie, every day we live with the idea that we might not make it home that night. I can usually push it way so that I don't think about it but it's become a recurring thought that's been haunting me a lot while im here. Despite what ever anyone else thinks, I know that I'm not invincible and that because of my job there is a very real chance that I might not be there as you grow up into the woman that I know you'll be. I know that neither your mom nor Nonna will let you forget about me but god forbid should the worst happen, I want to leave you something of myself, my own thoughts, and experiences, and maybe if I have any to give, some wisdom. Just something of me that you can go back to and draw on for support in my absence and even though I know this can't fill the ache I know you'd feel if I passed away but I hope it would be enough to ease it a little bit._

_By the time you're old enough to read this you'll already know how you were made but I'm going to go over it anyway._

_Your Mom and I wanted to have a child that had both of us inside. Since you have two mothers and no fathers, we had to use science. _

_Two women can't have a baby together without medical help so what we did was we had the doctor take eggs out of me and then they fertilized them with the donor's specimen. Once they confirmed fertilization they put an egg into your mom and her body accepted you. she carried you for nine months and after a huge debate we named you Caterina Aileen Rizzoli. Caterina is an Italian name that means "pure" and Aileen is an Irish name that means "noble". We chose these names because we believe that they are significant of who you are and how you will live because we see them in each other. Your mom thinks of me as noble and I can definitely see the pure coming from her._

_Your mom wanted to carry you because she had this wonderful dream of being pregnant with my child and although they said that your mom would have no genetic link to the child, we discovered that it's simply not true. You are the daughter of a same sex marriage and you do carry parts of both of us inside you. We ran a gene sequence on one of your blood samples during one of the two million exams infants get these days and I can assure you that your Mom's friend Tempe is an anthropologist of renown. Her word is good enough for any court so it's good enough for me and good enough for your mom._

_I know the math adds up to over a hundred but without the talking google of your mom to say it here I can't really explain the technical stuff to you. All I got out of it was that certain parts of DNA combine during your creation so that you are made up something like this. 68% of you is Jane Rizzoli DNA. 62% of you is Maura Isles (Your mom's maiden name). And 47% of you is your genetic father, a man that neither I or your mom have ever met but contributed to your birth none the less. _

_All I know is that he was a genius who went to MIT and graduated top of his class as well as attended Cal Tech where he received several honors. I seen a picture of him when we were picking out donors at the fertility clinic we went to and given your mom's proclivity (yeah, your Ma knows big obscure words too) for keeping everything to do with you, I'm sure that she has a picture of him somewhere. I don't know anything more about him but I'm eternally grateful for his donation to the clinic because without him, we wouldn't have you. _

_Don't look for him. He didn't have anything more to do with your creation other than leaving behind a specimen that we used to make you and you can get into big trouble for trying to find him._

_Where was I? Oh yeah. _

_If, God forbid, I'm not there for you, please remember that all of our hope and wishes are with you and that we will always be near because words have power and names have significance._

_Okay, enough of this kinda talk. I guess I should explain the big red book in your hands right now. After a long talk with your mom and some advice from my two best friends, your aunt Kate and your Aunt Jordan, I decided to start a diary for you incase… Well, in case the worst happens. I told them that I should have started these books years ago and that was when Kate reminded me that the project was started years ago, by your uncle Rick, the author and my favorite pain in the… neck._

_So I had Jordan go get this for me and her I am. This first book is full of pain. Mine. And I never wanted to share it with anyone. I didn't even know this thing existed before your mom showed it to me. I guess that like your Nonna says, "God has a plan for everything."_

_I think she may have been on to something, or just on something. Okay forget I wrote that cause the only thing she's ever been on comes in a bottle and you have to be 21 to buy it. _

_OK, oops, Okay. So this is how close I came to never knowing happiness and it's important to me that you know what we went through before you were born, before we even got together. Honestly I wanted to beat your uncle with this book when I found out but the truth is that without this seemingly insignificant collection of pages wrapped in leather, Maura and I would never have been and neither would you. This book changed everything and has been the one thing that I can think of that made all of this happen. It's the only reason why I haven't burned it to cinders years ago._

_And now it's yours._

_Every moment of your life was made possible from the pain, anguish, hurt and suffering in this simple book. It's not pretty and it will make you cry but it is the truth. If we haven't gone through this, you would never have been born and it's messing with my head so I know that it will mess with yours. Maybe your mom and I might have gotten together some other time but I know that I wouldn't appreciate her and damn near worship the ground she walks on without these events._

_Yeah, your Ma's whipped. But you know that no one else could have done it but Maura Dorthea Rizzoli._

_I love you Mia Bella. No matter what, I'll always love you._

Jane lifted the pen and re read her words. She loved the way they had flowed out of her and they had helped quell her mind. She knew that she was going to send Maura out for a new book. And as she looked up at the clock she realized that Kate would be back any minute. She set the pen down on the table and held the book close to her chest as her partner walked in carrying Caterina in her arms.

"There's your mama." She said sweetly. "There's your mama, Bella."

Jane set the book down and held open her arms. "Mia Bella! Venire qui il mio tesora." (My beautiful, come here my treasure.)

Catarina squealed at her Ma and squirmed hard trying to reach her, Kate airplained her to her mother and landed her on her partner's lap, careful to keep her off of the stitching.

Jane snatched her up and ignored the pain as she held her daughter tightly.

She held her tightly and made kissy faces at her before tickling her belly. Then she blew a raspberry on her daughter's belly, loving every second of the infant's giggles and squeals of delight.

Kate sat down in a chair and laughed along with them. "I can't wait to have one." She said.

"Their wonderful," Jane said, "I can't begin to tell you how much I love this little girl." She looked at her daughter and rubbed their noses together, "Sei così preziosa per me." (You are so precious to me.)

Her daughter grinned and drooled at the sound of her mother's thick Italian voice rasping the words. Jane froze as her treat detection went on alert. It was an instinct that she had learned to trust years ago when she was training to fight with her friend Colin O'Malley.

"Awe," a throaty feminine voice called out from the hallway. Jane looked over and relaxed some.

Kate turned sharply at the voice having picked up on Jane's change in posture. She too had long ago learned to trust Jane's gut and because they were as close as twin sisters, Kate was very attuned to her partner. So much that she knew almost every detail of her friend's life. From when she and Maura got to be romantic or when Jane was stressed to now, Jane was on edge and making a serious effort to hide it. As she took in the sight of the slender brunette in the government suit she too relaxed.

DEA Special Agent Sara Beltran was their age and three inches shorter than they were which put her at 5'6" tall. Her dark brown hair ran about three inches below her shoulder and her eyes were a light brown of a chocolate malt. It was her eyes that always set Kate off. Whenever the government woman looked at her, she always felt that those cold calculating eyes were sizing her up for a pine box.

But they had crossed paths on a number of cases and her eyes were deceiving. Sara had always been cordial, even when she was using her government authority to trump jurisdiction. She had always been helpful with information and was actually pleasant to work with, unlike many other Feds that they had had the displeasure of being around.

"It's always so beautiful to watch a mother and her child." She said as she stepped into the room. "This must be Caterina." She said with a grin. "I've heard so much about you little one."

Jane smiled, not as warmly as Kate because despite the fact that she liked the woman in front of her, her reflexes and instincts always tightened when Sara was around. Despite trying to find anything about her that would explain the mental alert she had around the DEA agent. She could find no reason for it and she had looked, really looked.

"This is my baby." She said. "Caterina meet Sara Beltran. She's a Fed but we don't hold that against her."

Sara laughed as she looked at the girl in her mother's arms, "Oh, she's so beautiful and she looks just like you except her hair color."

Caterina had dark brown eyes that looked almost black, her Ma's dimples, wildly untamable hair but she also had her Mom's smile and her hair was honey blond. The infant looked at the woman and stared.

Like Jane had, she stared as if she was trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

"Oh, she has your detective's look too." Sara said as she grinned wide, showing of her perfect white teeth and adopting that goo-goo baby tone that made Jane roll her eyes. "Hello, little one. You are so much like your mother that I feel like I'm being interrogated. Yes I do. You going to be a detective like your mother or a doctor like your other mother."

Jane laughed lightly, "I'm Ma or Mama. Maura is Mom or Mommy."

"Ooh." She said sweetly to the child. "I'm sorry little one, are you going to be like your mama or your mommy? I'd bet you want to be a doctor don't you?" she said as she tried to tickle the girl.

Caterina pushed at the hand that wasn't one she knew.

Sara laughed then and it caused the baby to jumped slightly and shoved her face into her mother's curly hair.

"She's a smart one, too." Sara said as she straightened up, "She doesn't just trust anyone."

Jane nodded as she rubbed the baby's back. "She takes after her mama that way, don't you?"

Kate had watched silently at the exchange. Caterina was suspicious of strangers but in her ma's arms she was a lot braver. She didn't like the federal agent. She wanted to remind Jane of that but she pushed the thought down. Sara Beltran set everyone off like that and it had served her and them when they worked together well.

Even when Jane questioned her about it more than a year ago, Sara had shrugged it off as just how people react to her. "Con men and car salesmen use their charisma to get you to trust them within a few minutes so they can clean you out. I'm just the opposite. When I show up, it puts people on the defensive right up front and more often than not, when they have something to hide I can sniff out their nervousness in a few minutes and know who to go after."

Jane had learned to overlook that sensation although she didn't entirely trust Sara. After all, when her gut told her something, she listened. And when that cold, dark place deep inside her soul stirred, she damn sure listened to that because _it_ had saved her life and Kate's and Maura's more than once. _It_ had earned her the moniker Painkiller Jane Rizzoli in the NYPD.

"Well." Sara said. "I really have to get back to the office. Paperwork on this case is a killer. I just came by to see how you're doing, Rizzoli."

"Better." She said, "Docs think I can go home this week so I'm hoping Maura can get me out of here tomorrow."

Sara placed a hand on Jane's shoulder. "Good. But take it easy or you'll be stuck at home longer and I know how much that drives you crazy."

Jane felt _it's_ chilly embrace run up her spine to numb her against the touch. _It_ did not like for Jane to be touched by this woman. At. All.

Sara removed the hand and nodded politely to Kate. "Beckett. I know it goes without saying but look after your partner and call me if you gals hear anything about The Raven."

The Raven was a viscous leader of a drug cartel that had swallowed up several other cartels in Columbia and Venezuela. He had turned his eyes to cocaine distribution networks all along the eastern seaboard and it had been war ever since with the message being clear. You work for The Raven or you won't be doing anything again. Sara Beltran and her partner DEA Special Agent Raul "Barricade" Barbosa were leading the task force the DEA had set up to shut down the drug lord. But the biggest issue was that no one even knew what the cartel leader looked like or where to find him.

Kate smiled and nodded, "I think we'll all sleep better when he's behind bars."

"I hope it's soon." Sara said, "I haven't slept much at all since his file came across my desk three years ago."

She walked out and Kate stared at the empty door way. "I like her but I wish she'd stop giving me the creeps."

"You and me both, partner." She said as she shook from the cold sensation pulling back inside.

Kate got up and looked out the door before shutting it. She looked around briefly and then sat on the bed next to her partner. Mia Bella was still against Jane's shoulder.

"I take it your _instincts_ were reacting to her presence." She said. Instincts were Kate's euphemism for _it_ whenever she couldn't be certain that they couldn't be over heard. Otherwise she simply referred to it as Painkiller.

"I don't know why but she puts me on edge." Jane said as she looked at her daughter's sleeping form. She gently eased Caterina down onto the bed between her legs and her tiny hand grabbed her tightly. Jane looked down and seen that her daughters eyes were wide open.

Kate saw it too, "Bella doesn't like her either it seems."

And that really bothered Jane. Her daughter was very much like her and Mia Bella followed her heart and her feelings.

"I think it's time we took another close look at our friends from the DEA." Jane said as she held her daughter close. "It's not going away. Three years and I still wind up like a spring ready to snap at the sight of her."

"LT's going to pitch a fit when she finds out." Kate said. "She's told you twice to lay off."

"I tell LT that Mia Bella faked sleep to get away from her and she'll run the search herself." Jane said, "And she'd be the first one to tell OPC where to go."

Kate nodded, "And how to get there."

* * *

><p><strong>More from the Author.<strong>

**The original idea was to put an event together where these people would come across each other and form a friendship naturally. That is the core of my Rizzoli, Beckett, Benson, Stabler team. The event is called LETO and it's an annual police training / seminar / getting together to shoot guns and all kinds of fun aspects of police work. The original story is being posted by chapter and it's called "The Gun Show".**

**The previous work is an EXCERPT for a story that is in process. The First story in this series is already up but when the rating changed I lost a lot of people according to the traffic graph and it took me a few to realize why. The search engine on Fanfiction is automatically preset to K to T rating and I think that a lot of people who search in the M category are looking to read about the nitty gritty and that's just not what I do. I respect the actors and love the characters too much to just toss them into a gig that needs to card for age. **

**My party line for what I do is: "If I was a writer for a show and I couldn't put it on FX, racy as that is, I won't write it here." I try my best to be tasteful.**

**The story is called, "****the Diary of Jane by Rick Castle" ****and it is the first installment of ****_The Raven _****series. So much for a five chapter story. It's just too fun to quit. **


End file.
